theroadreturnsfandomcom-20200214-history
Ch. 10: The Wild Man of Winsted
Back to Arheled The house stood in the circle of pines, endlessly watching the Gates of the North. A rude cabin it seemed to the eyes of any who saw it, mossy with years, built of grey planks and grey beams of axe-hewn wood, a porch running half around it, the roof shingled in wood, and the shingles were deep in moss. From the chimney of ancient bricks a faint smoke ever rose, smelling of strange and sweet woods. The man who sat outside it might have been carved out of wood himself, for all he moved, but his eyes gleamed and flickered with a blue light, as though his thought roamed far and wide, to the very ends of the World and back again, while the spiders spun webs across his arms and moss grew on his leather coat. The earth in front of him swelled and bulged upward, and there stepped out of it a large man, rough and uncouth, a ragged mantle flowing about him from which crumbs of earth still fell. “I know why you have come, Wild Man.” said the being that bore the name of Arheled. “I saw them also.” “They have walked in broad daylight down the main street of Winsted!” fumed the man of earth. “The dragons have been created, then.” said Arheled. “But they were not powerful enough to attack the Five with any hope of success. Bell repulsed them.” “The Hill was fighting them, too.” said Wild. “He had aid. A power he used that comes not from either of us.” “Nor from the Sisters, I deem.” the other answered. “Yet it is not hostile, and aid is aid, and that which is not against us, is with us.” “We have been challenged, my lord!” hissed Wild. “He sends his children to eat police in broad day, while we must inch along in disguise and use no power, for after all the little dirlas might freak out!” Arheled rose slowly from his seat. Stiff bones creaked like the branches of trees. “You are right, my vassal.” he said. His face frowned, hardening like stone. “The dragons are being stored in secret places to be trained by their Father. It is time to show him he is not yet supreme!” “What do you mean, my lord?” Arheled turned his gaze to him. “I will unleash the Wild Man of Winsted upon them.” A fiendish grin spread over the uncouth features of the Wild Man. “Yes.” he hissed. “Yes. Yes. Yes!” “Go and walk forth.” said Arheled. The late-summer night was sticky and humid and very warm. It was perfect for swimming. Especially after that nightmare at the carnival. Cassie only wanted to get as drunk or as high as she could get away with, and forget about it. Forget about everything. She would have to keep an eye on Abby, though; even though they were twins, Cassie was older, and felt an older sister’s responsibility toward her. The guys didn’t care, anyway, how drunk Mira got them; Mira was crazy anyway, even without drink. Cassie lazily went along with them, and when they suggested a swim at Resha Beach, said “Sure,” even though none of them had swim things. She didn’t care. Even in her boyfriend’s embrace she didn’t care, she drifted, too apathetic to bother to refuse. “I hate my body.” she muttered. Guys sometimes talked trash about it. She was pretty in a buxom, curvy way; “voluptuous” an older generation would have called t, but she called it fat. But here they were at Resha, in the wide parking lot in the angle of East Lake and Hurlbut, and Brandan was passing out the beer, and pretty soon she forgot all her dreariness, and laughed and could feel like she was happy again. The beach proper was screened from the road by the high earth berm, grass-grown, that had been piled after the ’55 Flood to keep in the lake; for otherwise there was only a slight rise between the cove and the valley leading down to Pratt St. In the night it was difficult to see, for trees grew on the left and ran down into a swampy clump of willows, and on the right reeds grew between the beach and the nearest house. Though the lake homes had an unimpeded view of the beach, in darkness one only sees shapes; despite being shallow and mud-bottomed, it felt more private. More wild. The boys were up in the lifeguard chair. Mira was complaining in a whine that she wanted to get naked and “nobody will get naked with me,” and pretty soon she and Ally were throwing their clothes aside, and Mira was laughing in the water with nothing on. It was crazy and weird, and Cassie didn’t care that the boys were looking right at her with nothing between her and them. It didn’t matter. There was a weird bubbling noise farther out in the lake, where the round white buoys and the farther long stick-like buoys were. “The b—bs and the d—s.” everyone called them. Cassie glanced out that way but only saw a round weedy mass like a rock. No moving people’s heads. “Whee! Come in the water, it feels so good!” Mira was giggling. Cassie laughed, feeling it come out too loud and hard, but she couldn’t help it, she was just high. The bubbling sounded again, and there was a loud splash as of someone swimming. “I thought we were the only ones here.” slurred Ally. She was sitting down in the water so only her head showed, and Cassie giggled as she kicked water on her. Then Mira screamed, and behind her from the lifeguard chair she could hear the startled shouts of the guys. Something was rising out of the lake. Something manlike, for immense arms swung from it, but either it was covered with seaweed or with long hair streaming water. It was striding inland, and eyes gleamed as they caught the dim orange streetlamps out by the intersection, and it was naked, but body hair hung gross and thick about it and a long beard was plastered over the chest. The girls were unable to move as the monster waded past them, the sand shuddering with its’ weight. It turned and surveyed the naked girls, and a long luminous tongue slowly emerged and travelled around its’ great bearded lips. Then it kicked over the lifeguard chair, sending the boys sprawling, and strode over the berm. There was a crunch of metal and glass as it stepped on the cars. On it strode, down Hurlbut, cracking the pavement into mighty pits. Able to move at last, the girls splashed ashore, pulled on their clothes and milled around their cars, unable to figure out what to do. Cassie was conscious primarily of two things—great fear, and shame. She felt sick, like she’d eaten too much rich food. This was supposed to be fun, and everything felt rotten! The mood was ruined. She swigged down another beer as the boys began calling friends. The hell with it. Main Street on summer nights had an eerie, palpable air about it, with the glowing neon shop-signs and the lighted windows, the orange streetlights and dark sky above; a night atmosphere, like an entity of its’ own. Bob the Jehovah’s Witness felt it, as he did every night, when he issued forth to spread tracts and tell everyone that the Watchtower was the only hope of salvation. He was a corpulent but earnest old man, wearing a straw hat with a small brim and often a long overcoat, such as when rain threatened. He had close-cut hair and a folded, simplistic sort of face. People passed him like shadows, like dim phantoms laughing madly and drunkenly in the underlight. No one stopped, or disengaged themselves as quickly as possible when he tried talking to them. He was in one of the bars now, finishing an argument with a pale drug-zombied-looking young man, who seemed incapable of realizing that Hell is an act of Divine cruelty and therefore doesn’t exist. Neither dies the afterlife. Only the hope of being resurrected to the earthly paradise at the end of the world; the bad would simply no longer exist. He was chary of mentioning this, however, since Ronnie Wendy—nice young fellow, very strong mind, very intelligent—had burst out laughing and started saying, “Don’t worry about Hell; we’re all gonna go poof!” It was a little hard to explain. A great shape passed up the street. Shouts were rising from outside. Then the restaurant door opened and this guy walked into the bar. So wild and weird a man had not been seen in Winsted for one hundred years and ten. Black hair billowed around him, over the great ragged mantle he wore. Underneath he was naked, but this was hard to see, so thick and gross was his body hair. Eyes like saturnine coals flashed from above what must have been his beard. The barmaid dropped a glass, and the shattering of it upon the floor was the only sound in that bar. “Oh come, none of you have heard of me?” mocked the creature. It’s voice was rough, deep as a waterfall, and awful to hear. “You ignorant little grasshoppers, who no longer know the names of the hills that you look upon each morning, who have forgotten the name of the Wild Man of Winsted!” When he left, they never saw; it was as if he had vanished. They were simply too stunned to notice. All down Main Street, cars swerved and crashed; people walking up the sidewalk, the queer empty laughter of the folks of Winsted echoing about them, froze in their tracks, as a shape out of the weirdest movies stalked down the median, long hair flowing out around him, cloak lifting, huger than any man. With a howling of sirens a police car did a U-turn and skidded to a halt across the Wild Man’s path. The hellish searchlight each car now bore, like a huge blue-white eye brighter than any Moon, glared full in the eyes of the monster. Policemen piled out, and police cars began collecting like wasps out of nowhere, officers piling from cars and crouching behind them, guns held in both hands at arms’ length. “Holy cal-loopasticks! What is that thing?” “We’d better shoot it! A creature like that could tear us apart!” the police could be heard exclaiming. A bullhorn was shouting, in the patient irritable tone police always seem to use through them, as if talking to children, “Get down on the ground! Put your hands on your head! Or we will open fire!” The Wild Man of Winsted gave a huge and hideous grin. “Go ahead.” he sneered. As bullets bounded off him like hailstones, he picked up a police car with one hand, still grinning. “I always did like playing with toys!” he jeered. As if it was made of Styrofoam he tossed it in the air, and then he was juggling cruisers like a circus preformer, while the police lowered empty weapons and stared in horrified fascination. “Sing hi, sing hey, let the good cheer resound, when the Wild Man’s in tooooowwwwnnn!” he sang. Then dropping the cruisers one upon another in a crash and shattering of glass and metal, he stalked off. Winsted that night was a haunted place. Down every street, through every yard, the Wild Man of Winsted walked. Not a single neighborhood but saw the hairy cloaked shape, fell eyes gleaming, weird and mocking laughter booming from the glowing mouth, pacing black against the streetlights, ignoring the news helicopters that soon were vying with police choppers above the town as much as he ignored the police cars that from time to time tried to stop him. Several times Cornello teleported by his demonic power to where the Wild Man was last seen by his dragon’s eyes, but each time he appeared in an empty street. All that night Cornello hunted, and all that night the Wild Man taunted him by eluding him constantly, transferring his essence faster than thought itself could leap: or so Cornello reasoned, but maybe Forest was not the only one capable of concealing himself even from a dragon’s gaze. As dawn came at last and the terrified city began to venture out and go to work, no further apparitions of the Wild Man of Winsted manifested. Cornello cast his dark gaze about, through wall and hill alike, but his adversary made no sign. Timidly the folk of Winsted came out, looking every which way; but all was normal on the streets of Winsted. That morning towards dawn, as the half-moon glowered cold from her perch and Jupiter shone hard and white some ways to her right, the Herald strode over the east horizon for the first time since winter. All summer he had risen with the day, concealed by the hard rays of jealous Apollo, but now he was visible in his right domain, arrow aiming across the arch of heaven, feet buried in the river of silver. The last person to see the Wild Man was Ronnie Wendy, knee deep in plastic cups and trash in the carnival dumpster, gathering the last cans from the wreck of the carnival. The twisted burnt rides were piled in the field, waiting for the scrapyard. The food tent was intact but packed away. All the debris had been thrown in the dumpster, and the yellow police tape only surrounded the scrapped rides. He heard a cry and looked out, and saw upon the height of the Sand Bank Cemetary a huge and hairy shape, arms lifted to the stars, crying aloud in a strange and mighty tongue, and there was joy in his voice.'' '' '' “Menelmakar!” cried the Wild Man. ''“Aever, aeva! Vo haltha kunthhonon!” There was considerable mirth on Wintergreen Island when the paper was taken in. Brooke had come over to talk about the great events in secrecy, and she and Bell were reading the front page and howling with laughter until Forest started clearing his throat. “OK, you guys have got to listen to this.” chortled Bell. “''Last evening the Fireman’s Carnival was interrupted by another of the inexplicable things that have been happening in Winsted this summer. What exactly took place is difficult to determine as eyewitnesses seem to become hysterical on the subject when interviewed and make bizarre statements, but evidently one of the carnival displays worked a little too well. There was a mass stampede from the scene. Dozens are presumed dead, and the carnival and much of the playscape was burned nearly to the ground. Bystanders claim that the place was invaded by, of all things, dragons. Police are unable to form a coherent picture of events.'' Isn’t that just a riot?” “It’s a good thing Ronnie called us last night.” said Forest. “Just listen. It gets better.'' Winsted seems to be out for fame in the UFO region this summer, or maybe shooting for a slot in the X-Files. All year the northwestern Connecticut city has been plagued with bizarre events. In mid-June a mysterious beacon of greeny-white appeared on one of the hills north of the city but no trace was discovered of what caused it. In July the local recreation center, Highland Lake, experienced a peculiar flood and tsunami, destroying many of its’ cottages. The cause of this has yet to be determined. That same day a flood control berm on the Mad River west of the town, apparently disappeared, all two hundred feet of it without a trace, inundating low-lying businesses downstream. Some weeks later the opposite end of Highland Lake experienced further upheaval, causing ten-foot waves to pound the shores. Now apparently dragons are regarding its’ carnival as a snack bar.” '' “Does it say anything about last night?” said Forest. “Yep, in a big insert with huge headlines. I think the paper must have been printed by then.” said Bell. “Well, I had Julian waking me up at midnight babbling incoherently about a huge creature that walked up Main St, got shot at without effect, and started juggling cop cars.” giggled Brooke. “I found all sorts of videos on YouTube about it. Wild must have spent all night terrorizing the town. Here, look. I’ll show you. Can I use your computer, Mrs. Lake?” “It’s Chrissy, sweetie!” giggled Forest’s mom. “Go ahead, it’s all turned on.” Brooke soon found the videos. A few were wobbley and fuzzy. The clearest one was of the monster tossing cruisers around like foam blocks, which made everyone laugh. The fuzzy ones only showed vague huge figures crossing open areas. “The camera was so scared it couldn’t shoot straight!” quipped Forest. “What are you quoting this time?” said Brooke. “Um, the last time somebody tried photographing the Wild Man, the camera showed a mass of hair on the head but none on his body, and the photographer claimed his camera got spooked.” said Bell. Back to Arheled